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We like to think of Peterman’s Eye as an old fashioned interactive community newspaper (if there is such a thing) focused on travel and curiosities. Talk with us about today’s post. Tell us about the places you’ve been. Or take a trip using J. Peterman’s exclusive travel services (coming soon). Read more...

Wise, funny, so modern, (even in translation), certainly the liveliest of Heian writers, and while she lived over 1100 years ago, you'd know her today.

Her name, "Shonagon" refers to the position she held at court (Minor Counselor); "Sei" is the name of her family.

Entry from Chapter 134 some years before e-mail:

Letters are commonplace enough, yet what splendid things they are! When someone is in a distant province and one is worried about him, and then a letter suddenly arrives, one feels as though one were seeing him face to face.

Her book is made up of about 320 separate sections — Reminiscences. Opinions. Dislikes. Likes.

Over half of her book is made of lists.

A list of elegant things:

A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.

Duck eggs.

A rosary of rock chrystals.

A list of rare things:

A son-in-law who's praised by his wife's father. Likewise, a wife who's loved by her mother-in-law.

A pair of silver tweezers that can actually pull out hairs properly.

A retainer who doesn't speak ill of his master.

Copying out a tale or a volume of poems without smearing any ink on the book you're copying from. If you're copying it from some beautiful bound book, you try to take immense care, but somehow you always manage to get ink on it.

Two women, let alone a man and a woman, who vow themselves to each other forever, and actually manage to remain on good terms to the end.

It’s fitting on Dear Diary Day that not only her pillow knew her, but we get to know her as well.

68 Members’ Opinions

I treasure the diaries I wrote between 14 and 21. I took much comfort in it when I was going through my divorce. I was able to revisit a time of innocence and tentative exploration. More than that, it helped me to realise how far I had moved from what I was yet, still, how some things never changed. It helped me to realise with horror too how I treated some people in the past, one of whom was the guy I dumped before. I sought him out (he lives in America incidentally), sought forgiveness and know that today, though burnished, I am more cherishable with an exalted capacity to do likewise.

Diaries are great - they help me to reflect, record, remember, destress, gain clarity, relief and release . Oh gee,....that sounds almost like a best friend. I now use a software driven one, which allows recording of photos and images too, the premium one even allows recording of other media. Here's a download if anyone is interested.

I've always been taken with those marvelous little books of blank pages. You know the ones. You find them in books stores in the stationery section or next to the checkout counter with the other impulse items. They have clever magnetic closures or fancy leather clasps and covers that look like something terribly important should be found inside. Maybe the directions to a treasure like Sean Connery's notebook in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or a record of an ancestor's travels to America.

Over the years I've collected lots of those little books. I've filled them with poems that touched my heart, verses from birthday or anniversary cards, bits of dialogue from books or movies that made me laugh or seemed profound at the time, song lyrics and one-liners that people far more witty than I have tossed off with seeming ease. Pressed flowers and autumn leaves are carefully perserved between the pages along with a drawing my niece did of the two of us when she was four. Like Spring Fragrance, those little books are like windows in time for me. And somehow...a comfort.

-Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. Mark Twain-I tried being reasonable once, I didn't like it. Dirty Harry Callahan-Money is the world's curse. May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover. Tevya

- You won't find too many people at their boss' grave who aren't dancing on it. Fox Mulder

- Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. A.D.

I've never been focused enough to keep a diary, although I wish I had. I've met so many incredible people in life. It would have been great to have a record of that and the clever things they told me when I was young.

The first third of my life I poured my heart out onto journal pages in various wonderful blank books, such as those so nicely described by A.KIRK, but then real life caught up with me and I no longer had even a few moments for transcribing reflections I did not have the opportunity to have.

What I really wish I had done was keep a journal of the books I read. Imagine if you had a list of every book you ever read--it would be fantastic. I did it for a year or two and quickly learned that comments like "this was a real pageturner" were useless and I learned to write a sentence actually describing the book for a frame of reference.

Quite amazing to read your thoughts years later and while knowing it was you feel that the person writing it was someone else. "That is most unfortunate. The gentlemen at court will certainly have heard of your expedition. How are we going to explain that you do not have a single interesting poem to show?" Empress Sadako spoke to her ladies in The Pillow Book; and I say to myself that what was most intriguing in 18 year old Tommy's verse and his garb is somewhat comical to his 57 year old alter ego and vice versa. But he's remains a fan though an enigma to himself. His journals and poetry like a hidden treasure. Isn't life strange?

Things That Are Near Though Distant.Paradise.The course of a boat.Relations between a man and a
woman.My copy was translated by Ivan Morris. It is one of
those books that I read straight through but only a page or two at a time. She
left treasure on each page.This is from the list of rare things Mr. Peterman quoted
above. Just slightly altered.
When people, whether they be men or
women or priests, have promised each other eternal friendship, it is rare for
them to stay on good terms until the end.The wording is slightly different from Mr.
Peterman's. I would like to read his translation.

I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was 10, and it had a profound lifelong effect on me. I have tried to read as many first person accounts of well, almost everything, ever since. Its is truly my favorite way to study history, even when it is fiction. I can't put my finger on the proper title of the 100 Year Old Civil War Widow that was so great but there are so many. Always looking for that slice of life that makes you smell the stew simmering and hear the crickets chirping as the sound of approaching.......knowing it actually happened makes it so special. Sharing someone's thoughts....unique privilege.

I do have my diaries from 6th grade through high school, and it is sometimes funny, sometimes weepy to read them now...so naive, so hopeful, so easily hurt.

Now, I keep a diary in my crossword puzzle books...Just jotting the day's events, dates, main activities in the margins....and I have them for years and years. I figure when I go, my kids will find them and have a few laughs....or not! or they may just throw them in the trash bag without opening them....Think I will leave a note in my "Mom's Will" file to direct them to at least look at them.....hmmmm...decisions, decisions..... to freak out the kids or not....delicious thoughts....

The only diary I have maintained is the one between my ears. I have made the decision to not focus on the negative as so many seem to do, and take a lesson from Anne Frank concerning the goodness of mankind. Some may think that to be foolish, but when I think of the grace and mercy shown me by so many over the years I causes me to pause and think, maybe grace and mercy are a gift to be shared and "payed forward" to those you love first, but especially those whom you might not care for so much. That is where the real test comes.

I know I have withheld forgiveness in my life and it was like chains draped around my soul. When I extended forgiveness I was set free from jail, one that I built for myself. I hope if any of you folk have withheld forgiveness towards someone, remember this; A wise man told me once "Lack of forgiveness is allowing the object of said to rent space in your mind and heart for free." thus taking up valuable space for more beautiful things to dwell. My forgiveness did both the offender and the offended tremendous good.

God bless you all today. I have to attend the funeral of a long time friends spouse today. It's sad in that she passed in her mid-forties from the rejection of a heart/lung transplant, she had two young teenage boys, a loving husband and in-laws. My family has known this family since the sixties and I grew up with the husband and his brothers. It seems to be happening a lot these days.

I hope my first two paragraphs didn't sound "Snarky" a word I have learned from my seventeen year old that kinda means "holier than thou"...trust me, I'm not.

I don't keep a diary - I keep an endless heap of spiral bound reporter's notebooks and randomly write what's on my mind, remarks overheard in the supermarket, observations on how my garden grows, telephone numbers I forget to write a name next to, recipies and suchlike. I wonder if anybody will ever read them.
TT~ I heard that about satellites falling out of the sky stuff. Some idiot was telling us if it falls in your backyard, don't touch it 'cos it might be be hot or sharp & you can't sell it on E-Bay 'cos it belongs to NASSA. O, how I would love guys from NASSA leaning on my garden wall saying "Please Mrs, can we have our satellite back?"

It is uncomfortable to admit how many diaries and journals I have read even after declaring never again.I know someone whose passion it is to collect them and who is able to afford the staff to find and pay for them sometimes, tilting a humble estate toward the prosperous.Here is what I think I have learned: some people record events, tiny things that fill their days; some put down feelings and some spy on life.Not a few others admit to a page what they could not to a human.The sense a person has given as to his concern for others, for civility, decency and respect for life on page one will likely hold throughout and as least as often as not, it is almost impossible to continue reading about a self-absorbed, self-pitying, sold-short, unhappy whiner with nothing much to teach.The naturally sunny, chipper types are fun to read but like maple sugar candy, in small doses.Some, it seems, imagine that every line they lay down will be one day chiseled into black granite and school children everywhere will be forced to learn them.

Does anyone ever write anything that they do not expect will be read by someone sometime? Do You?A Kirk ~I like this, the tail end of Robert Frost's poem- "Reluctance."Ah, when to the heart of manWas it ever less than a treasonTo go with the drift of things,To yield with a grace to reason,

George, George, George, How much did your son pay you for that
introduction?
I bet he tried to slip a shiny new nickel in your hand, like you did to him
so many times in the old days.
I can hear it now.

Here, boy, take a nickel, run down to the store and pick out a piece
of candy or a toy. Your mama and I have some things we need to talk
about.

And I can hear the exchange that follows:

Make it a quarter, pops, and I can take in a movie
too.That's my boy.Hazel ~ Isn't it funny how sometimes things just seem to fall into
place?

I never met my husband's mother. She died at 52 the year before I met her son. Some years later, when my father-in-law died 10 years to the day after his much missed wife we were cleaning out his house. I found a carton filled with those 5 Year Diaries--the kind with 4 or 5 lines for each year on 1 page and have a little lock on the cover. Upon further examination I realized they belonged to Caroline, my mother-in-law and that there were many of them.

After sorting and what felt like snooping, I was found that they began when she was 16 years old and continued until the day before she died. They were mostly factual entries as there was not much room and vacations and special occasions warranted their own separate extremely detailed notebooks.

I thought about what STONEY said about diairies being written with the idea of being read eventually, and I thought about how much rich detail they contained, and so I closed the bedroom door and put them in order. It took me 5 days. My husband and his siblings were busy with many things and if anyone noticed I was holed up reading, no one inquired. When I finished the weakly scrawled note she made in the hospital about who had visited her the day before she died I closed the book and sobbed.

My large in-law family was amazed when I told them I was upset by the death of their mother, as it had been 10 years earlier. For me it was a fresh wound. I had gotten to know her so well with her few daily comments, she was finally a real person for her. So sorry I never actually met her but all those years with attention to detail brought her to life for me.

I have tried to encourage her family to read them, but so far no one has.

Shandonista~ one of my favourite "overheards" was "The goldfish sucked my knees" Write a short story starting from there!
Today on the news was a story about a 26year old lady who has been in hospital for five years following a hit & run incident. She just got a massive criminal injuries payout to go give her 24/7 care at home. I do not trust her Care Management firm and I wish I could write her diary.

STONEY ~ You have previously mentioned your time
capsule of writings tucked away in some dark dungeon, bereft of light and
oxygen.
They sound a lot like ChefDeb's other mother's
writings only more random. I have another favorite book, written by Evan Connell,
Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel. It contains
epigrams, vignettes, anecdotes, prayers, musings, excerpts from other texts much
like the contibutions (for want of a better word) I imagine would be found in
your hide-away.

ChefDeb ~ Great story. One rainy day, you should
take those diaries and your computer, select some of the most interesting
passages and piece them together into one volume. It's just a suggestion, don't
feel obligated or guilty if you decline the challenge. It might make a great
gift to family members. If not, if they don't like it at all, you could always
bake them a pie.

Since we are hardwired for fear and uncertainty hangs over our daily routine, it is nice to read ours or someone else's diary and see the process unfold in words, works, and images which are invariably connected though sometimes seemingly incidental. Successful living is not just the big events but the little events that form the intricate web that holds the thing together and since our memories are limited and selective, the written word is marevelous and then we also have our children and siblings and a few honest friends there to remind us of what we may hope to forget or spin.

Hazel ~ Your writings must mimic your prayer tree or your prayer tree mimics your writings.You remind me of the title of the Zora Hurston novel Their Eyes are Watching God. I think of your prayer notes as little messages with eyes waiting for an angel or the Lord to pass by and collect them all or one at a time.

CHEF DEB:
Like you I wish I had kept a list of the books I read and add what I call a "turn of a phrase".
You know, something you like the sound of, good or bad.
Sometimes I wish I could remember a great phrase as a come back or discription of a situation.

TOMMY ~ I could be wrong, but from what I have seen posted here so far, tommy, paolos and Mr. Peterman are the only ones who have read the Pillow Book. That could be ironic, but I won't say how. I know you can't read everything and I am not asking for a show of hands, but for those who haven't read it, I second the recommendation.

ChefDeb - It's wonderful that you took the time to read your mother-in-law's diaries, that you were given the opportunity to get to know her. I have so often wished that my grandparents had kept diaries or journals. I was so young when they were alive, so busy with trying to grow up that I missed knowing them. I regret that. I've encouraged my parents to write. Stories from their childhood, things they've done, anecdotes. I really believe that, even if your in-laws can't bring themselves to read your mother-in-laws diaries, there will be a grandchild or great-grandchild that will want to know her and will treasure that gift.

Is it bad thing that I now want to spend time with Sei Shonagon? I get the feeling that I would like her very much. I started writing again about 2 weeks ago an old friend suggested that I may find some peace in doing so. I have slowly started maybe one day I will write freely and daily for myself again.

Stoney: your question: no, I have not put on paper a secret thought of my own, or a deeply held belief or desire in it's entirety and unobscured because I do believe it will not be private. I don't believe it will be written in stone somewhere, but I do believe someone will read it, so I cannot be honest to my good friend, the paper page. I wish I could. I'm a private kind of person though and even the recording of dressed-up thoughts goes against my grain, so to be brutally honest or exhibit my naivete in my diary - I can't do it. ... And something tells me that you can't either. That you've never been completely honest to a journal page. Almost honest, but not totally honest. It's just a feeling I have. Hmm?..................This is not to say I haven't filled many little volumes with my words and thoughts, it's just that when I get to the heart of the matter, whatever the matter is, I write in a sort of code that, while it makes literal sense to an interloper, it obscures the real meaning.

There's that,P4~, and the fuzzy time-line phenom....soo,so much has happened in my life, and yet, when I try to put it in an order, it doesnt fit, kind of like putting something back in the box it came in-I knew it came out of there!-why can't I get it all back in?....the subjective reality of memory,v. the objective reality of time...quandry.....it is that which made world history hard for me to put into perspective....when told as a story, it made perfect sense, but to have to read it as events, it did not, and I was a miserable failure....to even now, I can understand anthropology, but civilization has fits and starts that defy my sense of how it would all work out , and they lived happily ever after.....

I'm not sure its still around (some of more astute of you might be able to find it) but the Postal Service once had a lovely website archive of old love letters between famous people from the past (Henry the Eighth and Catherine? being one I recall. Also his letters to Ann Bolyn) but many, many more romantic figures. "Twould be interesting reading if anyone can find it.

I Sneezed a Sneeze Into the Air ... It Fell to Earth, I know Not Where ...But Hard and Cold Were the Looks of Those ...In the Vicinity to Which I Snoze ...My Literary Contribution for the decade ...Never kept a Diary, feeling surely that it was a "Girly" thing ... but upon entering into Active Duty with the Navy, I learn'd quickly to keep a Log, of all my activities and all that went on around me, day by day ... It was a great help in Report Writing, and a great Referrence Point, to ensure Clarity/Clarification ... Wasn't long before I decided that a properly kept Log, like a Ships' Log, is one of the Best CYA moves a Man can make ... and those Counter-Sign'd/Witnessed pages need only a proper PSE Operator for ultimate varification/validation ... Time Line and most all else can be determined by a hundred different Scientific Tests ... Veracity ... is the sole province of the PSE .......

A few nice ones from Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novel, A Way Through The Woods….Only the keeper seesThat, where the ring-dove broodsAnd the badgers roll at ease,There was once a road through the woods~ Rudyard Kipling ~

The newly arrived resident in North Oxford is likelyto find that although his next-door neighbor has afirst-class degree from some prestigious universitythis man is not quite so clever as his wife~ Country Living ~ January 1992

What is a committee? A group of the unwillingpicked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary~ Richard Harkness ~ New York Herald Tribune 15 June 1960

Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm~ Sidney J. Phillips ~ 1953

There is a reason why mothers are more devoted totheir children than fathers: it is that they suffer morein giving them birth and are more certain that theyare their own~ Aristotle ~

Park4 ~ I may have misunderstood Stoney. I thought
he was talking about writing just for the pleasure or fun of it without any care
concerning if or when it would be read by others.

RINGS ~ If I may answer your question from my
perspective, It's not a bad thing, it's just something you should have done in a
previous incarnation. She is now, nothing like she was back then. She is more
bookish and doesn't circulate as much.

p-This tradition of miscellany or "following one's brush" a form of literary wandering is about the freedom to use a variety of forms and a wide range of subjects. Arthur Waley as a translator has helped me go where I can not go on my own and today I found my copy of his translation of the Tao on my dustiest shelf that was originally acquired for $1.75 and felt a picture of it worth posting.

Ivan~ Recently I was going through a small pocket daybook I kept on-ship wHen I was a young PFC Acting Squad Leader- 1955 maybe.. An entry that makes me smile (I don't remember how it came about) simply says "Begelman spit on the Emblem today (the Marine Corps emblem)".

You can imagine the disgrace that would have come down on him if I had reported it...but discression being the better part of valor, I didn't. So now you know the kinda guy I really am and so it goes.

MISS KORTHAL: A kind thing for you to say ... but ... for the first time I have ever given that idea any thought, I have to say that, I am not sure what I could Legally release, and/or what information might still be CLASSIFIED ....... Not that I am all that important, but the denizens of the darker Halls of Government think that THEY are ....... I am ... going to look at three different pages, and see if I can remove them from the Logs, w/o skewing the Text ... Each of those three pages is Counter-Sign'd by one of three different Presidents ... a plum for which I ask'd, purely on a Lark ... and years apart, each .......But THANKS for the thought !!!Today is not only The Preparation ....... but it is now wending down, Family Day ...Tomorrow is a Double Whammy ... ICE CREAM CONE DAY ... and ... NEPTUNE DAY .......It is really Good to have so many things to Celebrate ... and The High Holidays are approaching rapidly .......ROADYACHT: How about telling us the Story of the Four Rich Guys having Supper together ??????? Practice here, for the Club Car tonite !!!

paolos: I'm sure you didn't misunderstand S., and I did. Maybe I intended to write what I wrote regardless of what I read into S.'s comment. Does that make any sense that all? It's the best I can do. ;)

Into the happy realm of food: some of the best old "diaries" have been found inside the tattered and spotted and stained covers of recipe books. Entire lives of women who grew up in the 1920's and beyond have been recorded in wedding gift volumes of Irma Rombauer's The Joy of Cooking, First hand, I saw my mother (and my father who had his duck ("Duck a la Jack a L'Orange") and pheasant recipes) write comments and phone numbers, first names, exclamation marks, blurred fountain pen lists, notes too hard to read (on purpose?) in pencil, a leg of lamb recipe with dill recipe written in ballpoint pen, pressed hard into the page so it's imprint was visible three pages later - and our families addresses, and phone numbers, X-d out when we moved,the new address rewritten along with the phone number, and notes upon notes about food and feeding that told far more about us, than what we ate when. ...... It's a brilliant read if you're a family member like I am, but in truth I've read less compelling New York Times Best Seller titles than this 1937 version of Rombauer's cookbook, edited and expurgated and decorated by my mom, who maintained for all her life that she was no writer. ... that the writing genes belonged to my Dad and myself. She didn't realize that she'd written our family story in margins and end papers of an everyday book she kept in a kitchen drawer. And I am ever so grateful that she did.

The Pillow Book of Sei Sonagon was made into a sumptuous, many-layered, highly technically sophisticated film by Peter Greenaway (who also did "The Draughtsman's Contract," "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover," "ZOO--A Zed and Two Naughts," "Bellly of an Arthcitect," and several others. These are all of them excellent films.

Paolos- Very True you are quite right. Park4 - I have my Maternal Grandmothers recipe books from before she was married & my Great Aunts church sponorered Cookbooks. and you are right, they are The Diaries of MY families kitchens. I see their handwriting in them about how to cut the suger, or to add a bit more water, the pages that have an old paperclip on them becuase they were used so often or family favorites, and even the "don't make EVER again" notations by quite a few of the recipes. For me it happens to be a great insight as to what my family members made for dinner over the years and what they happened to like & dislike. It's also alll a way to keep traditions alive no matter how small they may seem to be.

KSS...................ah yes..............it was many women's introduction to a young and, let's say, very generously proportioned Ewan McGregor.......................delicious.................

Really nice posts today. I love to write letters, but I have to say I fall into PARK's realm of not journaling; I don't want anyone reading my most private thoughts. I all ready have several journals filled w/ cringe inducing, angsty poetry from my youth.......................

KSS ~Improbable as it seems, we have seen The Pillow Book.This sort of conversation ensued:B - "Can you read and understand the writing on these bodies?"Me - "No."B - "Doesn't that bother you?"Me - "N-not that much."

GEORGE: Kindness and Decency will win out over everything but Honor ... Every Human Being has Bad Days, some not even of his own making ... sometimes, when no ONE is harm'd ... keeping still is the wisest Action/Reaction ... Valiant people figure that out early on, which is why they makes the Best Leaders .......GOOD ON YOU, SIR !!!!!!!

My mother was an avid journal keeper. She recorded her dreams along with thoughts and details in her life. I could only read part of one, but one of my sisters couldn't wait to get her hands on all the journals ...mostly so she could then tell the rest of us know how crazy our mother was...but really, after reading half of one journal, I couldn't tell when she was recording a dream or writing about a real event in her life. It made me feel dizzy, so I had to close the book and put it away. It's been several years and maybe they wouldn't affect me that way now, but I have no desire to revisit those journals. I prefer to remember my mom as she was in person...yes, she was a little crazy, who isn't...but she was wildly individual and adventurous....and lots of fun..

Bebe...ooh la la is right. Beautiful...! Always have liked Ewan McGregor and Vivian Wu is gorgeous. I just might have to see it again. I wasn't too crazy about The Kids Are AllRight ...I like Bening, Moore and Ruffalo, but found it a bit contrived and predictable. A recent movie I liked was, Midnight in Paris....Owen Wilson is Woody Allen's alter ego....even my sister, who doesn't like Wilson, loved the film. Very enjoyable.

Jane ~ I saw Midnight in Paris on the redeye back from the west
coast several weeks ago. I'd like to hear Park4's take on it if she ever sees
it. I'd like to know if she thinks Zelda was true to form or if the character
was more of a caricature of the real Zelda.

Park ~ You were right I was wrong. It's no surprise, you know Stoney
better than I do.

RINGS ~ Excepting the book (not that I would object if you were to read it
to me), if you can find a way to travel back to visit with Sei Shonagon, I want
to go with you. May I, please? I'll behave. I promise to sit in a corner,
just to watch and listen.